


to differ when viewed from different positions

by slaapkat



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emerald Twilight, Final Night, Gen, Parallax Hal Jordan, Zero Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 21:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21125234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaapkat/pseuds/slaapkat
Summary: Parallax, nounthe effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions.





	to differ when viewed from different positions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm obsessed with Hal Jordan's Parallax arc and this is how I deal with it.  
My own personal interpretation of events is a mixture of an actual mental breakdown along with an actual parasitic entity. Think cordyceps. This fic is a series of snapshots of events from Hal's perspective as he struggles with the effects of his mental break. I hope you enjoy!

Perhaps the Guardians were right when they said no mortal being was meant to have the full power of the Central Battery.

Humans especially. 

The— two? three? —other times Hal had tried, foolhardily flinging himself straight into the battery in an attempt to save others, it hadn’t ended well. His head pounded, and he felt like a wind-up toy wound too tight, bursting with power and energy no one mortal being was meant to contain, and that had been just a _fraction _of the awesome power contained by the Central Battery. 

Now, Hal is fairly sure he’s about to die. 

The adrenaline had worn off days ago, the fear and shock and _rage _from the destruction of Coast City propelling him across the entirety of space to Oa, taking down anyone who got in his way in his way until he finally reached the Guardians. 

He’d killed Sinestro and Kilowog in cold blood, before killing the Guardians, too. God, what had he done—

They wouldn’t listen. No one would listen to him. They let him walk straight into the battery unimpeded and paid for it with their lives. It had to be done. 

Hal almost wishes it hadn’t. 

In the days since, he hasn’t slept. Hasn’t been able to, not even sure if he _can_ anymore, so much green energy flowing so hotly and fiercely through his veins that it’s almost impossible to regardless. It’s less of the steady, rested awareness normally afforded by a power ring, and more the uncomfortable heart-racing, high-strung sensation similar to a caffeine bender. It’s too _much_. 

He can feel his mind beginning to fray more than it already has. 

He keeps losing time. Hal knows it should be more worrying, but— well, it’s not like anything _too _bad has happened so far. Sometimes he closes his eyes, and the next time they open hours have gone by and he’s lightyears away from where he last remembers. 

This is one of those times. 

It’s dark, but he’s back on Earth. The last thing he remembers is fighting Guy, and— others. The memory is already muddled and hazy in his mind. 

His head feels like it’s about to split open, vision swimming and nausea roiling fiercely in his gut. He’d destroyed the Central Battery and taken every shred of power for himself because he was _sure _it was the only way, but now it’s as though all that power is fighting tooth and claw to escape, unable to be contained by his feeble human body. 

Hal leans against a dirty brick wall in some dark and dilapidated alleyway, and swallows back another wave of nausea. He’d come back to Earth, intending to make good on his promise to bring his home back, but—

His return hadn’t been taken as well as he’d originally hoped. 

Unfortunate. He’d— he’d just have to show them, is all. Hal had power now, _real _power. He could prevent what happened to Coast City from ever happening again. Couldn’t they see? Couldn’t they realize he was right?

The nausea swells again, and this time Hal can’t fight it. He stumbles over to a trashcan and vomits, the bile a sickeningly, unnatural yellow. Hal doesn’t appear to notice. He wipes his mouth and wills himself steady. Parallax takes form once again, and he flies off into the night sky. 

He will show them. He has the power to finally make things right, and he’ll _prove _it.

He needs to see Carol.

They’re not together anymore, but he _needs _to see her. It’s been months, and he's gotten better at controlling himself. He’s desperate for someone to understand him, and Carol feels like his only hope. Coast City was _her _home, too. If he could get her on his side, then he could find Tom, and maybe all the others would see he made _sense_…

It’s not hard to find her. His power was beyond comprehension, and if he so wished he could simply _will _himself by her side, but finds himself flying the distance out of habit. Hal finds her place in Montoya Bay, and as an afterthought, wills his gleaming emerald armor to shimmer away into nothingness just as he knocks on her door, leaving clad in his once-usual flight jacket and jeans. Carol deserved to see him as who he was-- who he still _is_.

The door opens a crack, only a glimpse of Carol peaking through before she sees just who is standing outside and throws it all the way open, her face frozen in shock. Hal offers a somewhat sheepish smile and opens his arms in tentative invitation. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since Coast City, all those months ago, and seeing her _alive _never stopped making his heart jump with immediate relief.

“_Hal_,” Carol breathes, eyes wet with relief of her own and willingly allowing herself to be drawn into his arms. Her hands cradle his face, and her expression falls, brows drawing together in obvious concern. “Hal, you’re burning up. Are you okay?”

Adjusting to his newfound power had been hard, sure. His body fought it every step of the way, struggling to contain the godly might of the Guardians and thirty-six hundred Green Lantern rings combined. _Still _fighting it, honestly. The throbbing headaches came and went, the antsy, skin crawling sensation of restlessness that never endingly compelled him to _do _something persisted, and a haze would creep along the edges of his thoughts if he ever let his mind wander, but he felt _fine_. He knew what he was doing was the right thing in the end. The ends justified the means. Surely, Carol would recognize that, too. 

“I feel fine,” Hal replies breezily, smiling back in an effort to comfort her; it doesn’t quite work, even if the fact seems to escape him completely, and he doesn’t notice how Carol goes stiff. “Honestly. I came because-- I needed to talk to you.”

Carol doesn’t pull away, but doesn’t seem any more at ease despite his reassurance. Her concern remains plainly evident, worry etched into every line of her face. “Hal, what happened? You-- You’ve been gone for _months_, and no one will tell me _anything_. What’s been going on?”

“It’s… complicated,” Hal says, grimacing somewhat. “Can I come in?”

Carol hesitates, doubt flashing in her eyes before ultimately nodding and stepping back to let Hal in. 

Her apartment was small, a far cry from any of the homes she had owned in Coast City, and in a minor state of disarray. She ran a hand through her hair and huffed in exasperation at herself. “I’m-- sorry, I wasn’t expecting company, and it’s been stressful since-- since, well, _you know_, and I’ve been trying to get back on my feet--”

“Carol, it’s fine,” Hal says gently, stopping her with a hand to her shoulder. He smiles again, warm, but it only serves to cause that vague sensation of discomfort to wash over her once more. “That’s actually why I’m here.”

She goes still, then, almost unnaturally so, glancing at Hal with a touch of uncertainty. “What do you mean?”

Hal’s smile grows wider, seeming for a split second to stretch unnaturally in Carol’s eyes, and doesn’t quite reach his own. “Carol, I can finally fix _everything_!”

“Hal…” Whatever unease Carol must feel seems to grow. It fails to deter Hal.

“No, _listen-- _I can bring back Coast City and everyone in it, I’m _sure _of it,” he continues, smiling too brightly, a manic sort of excitement beginning to edge his words. “I _almost _had it, before. I almost brought back Coast City on my own, but my ring, by itself, wasn’t strong enough. _I _wasn’t strong enough. But now--”

“Hal, what are you _talking _about?” Carol says, worried and-- afraid? Afraid of what? “What do you mean you tried to bring back Coast City, Hal--” She cuts herself off with a gasp, realizing. “That dome that appeared… that was _you_?”

“Yes!” Hal says excitedly. “But _now _I have the power I need! The Guardians tried to stop me, but I _know _I can bring Coast City back!”

“‘Tried’?” Carol echoes. Hal nods eagerly, and she frowns. “What do you mean, tried? Why would… why would they try to stop you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he says quickly. “What matters is that-- I need you to know I’m only trying to make things right. That’s all I want. You believe me, don’t you? Don’t you want your _home _back?”

Desperation bleeds into his words then, on the edge of frantic. The _others _didn’t believe him, Guy and Diana and even _Arisia_. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Carol calls him mad, too. He’d killed Kilowog for it, he hadn’t wanted to but he _did_, and if _Carol _can’t even see that it’s so important that he does this… 

Carol takes a step back, the fervor of Hal’s words sending a chill down her spine. It was fast becoming obvious this wasn’t the Hal she knew, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. “And how are you… doing this, exactly?”

Hal’s grin stretches ever wider, teeth gleaming in a way that fills Carol with a dread she can’t explain. His eyes are wide and wild, unsettling and too eager in their intensity. He extends his arms and a flash of bright green energy consumes him, clearing to reveal himself in a suit of gleaming emerald armor, a regal, deep green cape flowing from the pauldrons on his shoulders, an aura of unimaginable power surrounding him. Carol’s eyes go wide, the blood draining from her face.

“I _took _the Guardian’s power for myself,” he explains, smug. “They didn’t deserve it, anyhow. They didn’t believe that I only wanted to set things right. They _allowed _Coast City to be destroyed, and tried to keep me from bringing it back. They tried to send other Lanterns after me, my own _friends_! I had no choice--”

“Hal,” Carol says, low and afraid. “What did you do?”

“I had no choice!” Hal repeats sharply, fists clenching. “The Guardians paid the ultimate price for their hubris. They wasted those Lanterns’ lives for _nothing_. And what did it earn them? A pile of ash. The Corps is gone. _I _am the only authority, now. I have the power to bring Coast City back, but people keep-- getting in the _way_!” He snarls in frustration, ignorant of the way Carol had shrunk back from him in fear. “If they could just see-- if you could just… _tell _them, help them see my way, help them see that I’m right. If you agreed with me, maybe we could change their minds? Prove to them I’m _not _mad, I just want to make things right!”

He’s panting by the time he’s done, head swimming with the power suddenly surging through him, bright green energy leaking from tightly clenched fists. It’s dizzying, his grasp on reality threatening to slip even more in the face of it all, but he forces himself steady for the sake of Carol. “_Please_,” he pleads brokenly. “Believe me.”

Carol is frozen against the wall, making no attempt to hide her fear. No, _no_, this was all wrong, she didn’t have to be _afraid--_

“I think you should leave,” she says quietly, swallowing thickly. “You need-- _help_, Hal. Something happened to you. You-- you’re not the same.”

“Carol…”

“Please,” she interrupts, sharp, then swallows again, struggling to maintain her own facade of control. 

He doesn’t have to. He _knows _he doesn’t have to, because there’s nothing Carol can do to make him. She doesn’t have the power of the Star Sapphire anymore, what could she hope to do alone against the might of the entire Green Lantern Corps condensed into a single man?

_Nothing_.

And yet, Hal obeys.

It _hurts _to know he can’t even rely on Carol, but he still loves her enough that he can’t bear to allow any harm to come to her, by his own hand or otherwise. His expression crumples, breathing turning harsh as he grapples with the feeling of his world turning inside out all over again, but he does nothing. He schools his face into impassiveness, nothing more than a slight frown betraying the turmoil within. 

“I’m sorry it had to end this way,” is all Hal says, his sorrow genuine. In a flash of green light, he’s gone.

Unseen by Hal, Carol sags to her knees and weeps.

With no other option, Hal elects to take matters into his own hands.

Even all the power wielded by the Guardians of the Universe hadn’t been enough to bring Coast City back to life. Hal had tried, again and again, to get _more-- _only to fail, again and again. He’d even gone so far as to steal two of the small handful of power batteries that remained in the hopes it might provide a conduit to _focus _his power, and yet even that had failed. 

As it turns out, the easiest way to _fix _everything was to make it so that it never happened at all. 

But, of course, nothing was ever that easy, was it?

As far as Hal was concerned, it was a foolproof plan. Start over from the very beginning, remake the universe so that the destruction of Coast City never happened, so that nothing bad that had happened to anybody _ever _happened in the first place. The whole _universe _needed a fresh start, to be fixed and remade and done _right_.

In fact, why stop there? He could remake _every _universe, give _everyone _who’d lost something during the Crisis their home and lives back, as though nothing had happened at all. It just made _sense_. Everybody wins!

What were a few billion lives lost as a consequence, when he could make things right for the people that _mattered_? When he could _improve _the lives of so many more?

Why couldn’t anyone see that he was _right_?

The same blind rage that consumed him after Coast City consumes him again now, surrounded on all sides by the people he once considered his closest friends, roaring and spitting with fury as he struggles against the grip of the new Green Lantern now holding him back. 

Ollie stands a distance away, coldly aiming an arrow squarely at his chest. Hal snarls and stares coldly back.

Green Lantern shouts in his ear as the arrow embeds itself directly into his heart. 

Hal chokes, tastes blood in the back of his throat, and the world goes black.

The sting of humiliation lingers long after his defeat. 

Oa, his absolute last hope at making things _right_, was gone. Destroyed by the Green Lantern in a bid to prevent him from absorbing its power. It nearly destroyed him, too, and yet Hal remains.

He’s beginning to wish he hadn’t. 

A desperate, final gambit to reclaim the last Green Lantern ring of his own only served to put his own madness on clear display, the betrayal of his own friends battling against him overwritten by the horror of what he’d down to them. 

He’s not Green Lantern anymore, and he never will be. He can accept that.

What he’s not sure that he can accept is that final scrap of Ganthet’s power, willingly given, feeling as though it had been grafted onto his very soul.

In some rundown, sleazy motel in a dilapidated part of town, Hal stands in front of a dirty mirror, and hates what he sees. 

Ganthet’s power had come with a price, it seemed, offering a lucidity he hasn’t felt since long before all this madness began. His thoughts are in order, his thinking is clear, and Hal is suddenly and abruptly made uncomfortably aware of every single atrocity he’s committed in his single-minded quest for power.

No matter how much he tries to justify it to himself, how he’d always justified it to himself, it never sticks. The desire for more power remains, ever-present, the gnawing desperation to bring back Coast City and fix everything no matter what, but now it only serves to settle heavily in his gut, making him nauseous with the guilt that threatens to consume him.

“Stop it,” Hal says raggedly, talking to no one in particular, and runs a hand down his face. “_Stop it._” 

The guilt continues to turn his stomach. Hal slams a fist on the sink’s dirty countertop and snarls at the mirror. “Stop it!”

It’s his own reflection that continues to stare back-- he’s _himself_, but barely. He looks as broken as he feels, unshaven and run ragged, unable to rest since being forced to finally confront the consequences of his actions. 

Ganthet’s exact intent, surely. 

“I had no choice!” Hal shouts. “I did what I thought was right! I lost _everything _because of you! It’s _your _fault Coast City is gone! Your fault for everything that’s happened since! _Yours_!”

Silence is the only reply, nothing but his own blood roaring in his ears. Try as he might, it’s only his reflection which stares back, the Guardian he cries out for nowhere to be found. If there is a lesson to be found in all this, it’s one Hal refuses to acknowledge. _He’s _right, not the Guardian. Everything he did was for the greater good, he knows, he _knows--_

Hal lets out a single, agonized cry and smashes his fist into the mirror, shattering it. He collapses against the sink, bloodied hand cradled close to his chest, and feel hot tears begin to stream down his face.

Ganthet’s presence recedes, and a familiar haze once against slips across his mind.

The Cyborg Superman is dead, and Hal suddenly and abruptly realizes he is without purpose. That ever-present gnawing emptiness eats away at him as he stares impassively up at the Source Wall. 

Coast City, for all intents and purposes, is avenged. The man responsible for its destruction is dead, by Hal’s own hand. It’s not as much as a relief as Hal had hoped. 

It’s not— much of _anything_. Hal had thought he wanted this, had thought finally avenging the seven million lives that had vanished with the rest of his home would be accompanied by a grand sweeping sensation of accomplishment and relief, of superiority and _pride_. 

Instead, that emptiness persists. 

It calls for more power, never ending. Hal had long since come to the quiet acceptance he was never going to gain enough power to truly bring Coast City back, not by his own hands at least. The whole of the Green Lantern central power battery hadn’t been enough, the core of Oa hadn’t been enough, stealing other batteries hadn’t been enough— hell, even absorbing the power of pure _time_ hadn’t been enough. That unrelenting hunger for what he’d _thought_ was revenge beneath it all drove him forward, and none of what he’d done managed to sate him in the slightest. 

Maybe he was just too far gone. That’s certainly what the rest of his former friends undoubtedly thought. Hal hadn’t been on Earth in— he didn’t even know _how_ long at this point. There was no point in going back. He wasn’t wanted, and wasn’t interested in anymore needless fighting. 

There was no point in… much of anything anymore, really. 

Mongol was dead. Cyborg Superman was dead. Coast City wasn’t coming back. Hal stares at the Source Wall. He feels empty. 

Countless beings foolhardy and arrogant enough to believe themselves indestructible paid for their hubris by having their bodies litter the Wall like living tombstones, eyes and mouths locked wide open in perpetual screams of unimaginable horror. From titans and giants whose height spanned for miles to the most insignificant creature capable of sentient thought. To try and see through to the other side was certain death. 

To touch the Wall was to become it. 

It was a temptation Hal wasn’t sure he could bear for much longer. 

The kid— _Kyle?_ —offers him redemption. 

The Earth’s sun is dying. 

It’s a chance, Hal thinks, a _real_ chance. His reasons for continuing as Parallax, for _living_, are rapidly dwindling. A chance to finally unload all the guilt, the shame, the desperation weighing him down. A chance to finally be seen as _Hal Jordan_ one last time. 

The people who once called him a friend won’t be happy to see him. Hal thinks Kyle likely underestimates that. 

The power he wields as Parallax is their only hope. 

_Hope_. Hal almost wants to laugh. That’s not something he’s felt in quite a while. He’s not even sure he feels it, now.

What he _does _feel is an immensely sobering sense of finality, lucid and clear headed in a way he hasn’t been since--

Since--

He can’t remember. Ganthet’s sacrifice could only provide a soothing balm for so long. The sheer power he wielded as Parallax had come to be like a lingering fever that would never quite break, muddling a mind and thoughts already irreparably broken by unthinkable grief, leaving him certain only of his single-minded goal to _fix _everything.

The sun-eater finally provides him that very opportunity. 

Hal knows he can defeat it. He also knows it’s a one-way trip. 

There’s peace in knowing that, he thinks.

The sun is _cold_, in its last dying throes before the sun-eater consumes it completely. With no one to stop him, Hal could do whatever he wanted. He had the power, he had the _will_. What was the might of _Superman _compared to _him_, in this moment, with the lives of everyone on Earth in his hand?

But, he’d made an oath. As Green Lantern, he’d come to realize just how important those could be. He wasn’t about to forget that now.

It’s sheer _agony _to absorb the sun-eater into him, excruciating pain lancing through every cell of his entire being, crawling like razor blades up his arm and setting fire to his lungs, but he’s out to prove to everyone that he can make good on his promise to actually _fix _things, once and for all.

Darkness begins to cloud the edges of Hal’s vision, the pain of absorbing the entirety of the sun-eater combined with the agonizing effort of reigniting the sun taking every last shred of his willpower.

He knows, he _knows_, there’s no coming back from this. Hal did this in spite of that. He did this because, on some level, he knew he could finally _escape_. The things he’d done, the people he’d killed, the tragedies he’d caused-- this moment, this _one _moment, was his only chance at redemption, regardless of how much he actually deserved it.

He couldn’t save Coast City, but he _could _save the one home he still had left.

The sun bursts around him, flames breathing back to life in one great surge of power.

He’s free.

_Beware my power..._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also slaapkat on tumblr!


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